The Less Influential Influential

I found this article from Knowledge@Wharton, the magazine from the UPenn B-school of the same name to be incredibly interesting. The key take away for me was, in short, that it is not the person who says, "Listen to me!" that gets listened to the most but rather the person who is asked, "What do you think?". It makes all the sense in the world but yet it was so eye-opening to see it represented this way.

I'd hypothesize that one of the differences in that the self-reported opinion leaders are more focused on themselves and how others perceive them than the Physician 184 types, who are focused and committed to their vocation, interest, cause or what have you. Maybe they're more interested in accomplishment and advancement related to their passion than self accomplishment and self advancement.

Particularly interesting to me — and I've been thinking about it a lot as it relates to me, my colleagues — is the thought put forth by one of the researcher that contends "...self-reported opinion leaders are less interested in what others are doing...'I know I'm important. I don't need to care about what other people are doing.' "

As stated in the article, "...just because people think they're important doesn't mean it's true." I'll keep my eyes open for the second study to see if it still plays out the way it did in the first one.

Luxury Versus The Empowered Consumer

Here's a link to an article on the Marketing Daily site written by Greg Furman. I posted a response that's shown at the bottom and thought I'd add a little more here. What I alluded to in my comment on the article but I'll say more boldly here is this: most luxury brands just plain don't have a clue.

Why? They look at the world only through a lens of how they perceive themselves; they are the center of the universe. Greg tells us not to worry, that this universe is safe and, at worst, just inconvenienced by the economic turmoil everywhere; if you're a luxury brand, just keep doing what you're doing and the world will come back around.

Some other thoughts:

• If I have a closet full of Armani suits, are they luxuries? Or just my clothes?
• If I spend $2500 a year on new golf clubs because I'm passionate and competitive about the game, is that a luxury or a necessity?
• If I spend a few hundred thousand dollars on a Tesla, a brand that's been around for only a couple of years, how important is heritage?
• By this definition, ''the best that the mind of man can imagine and the most sophisticated hand of the virtuoso craftsman can achieve", is Juicy Couture a luxury brand?

In short, I think luxury brands is a misnomer; what we really have are products and services that people are willing to spend a premium or super-premium price on in order to get some level of satisfaction, gratification, enjoyment or experience from. But that is in the eye of the beholder not the purveyor.